izigame.me

AVOID | LACKING | MAYBE | WORTHWHILE | COMPELLING | UNMISSABLE
Dust: An Elysian Tail is an action/adventure metroidvania with some light platforming aspects to it. This game released over a decade ago and while I think that's apparent in some ways, in other ways it doesn't show its age.
In terms of what I enjoyed, I quite liked the overall look of the game (minus two things mentioned below). I don't really tend to like the look of pixel art games and I tend to really enjoy the look of hand-drawn/painted games (think Afterimage), but the latter seems to be in short supply. It's always a treat when I see a developer has made a choice to focus on the aesthetics of the game. I liked the combat once I got used to it (happened relatively quickly. I just had a rough first 20 or so minutes). I also thought the general flow of the game was pretty good, with some clear areas that one must return to once a particular skill is received in game, but I never once felt lost.
For what I consider neutral, I found the story to be so-so. I don't really play most games for the story unless they're explicitly narrative-based, so this didn't bother me too much. I found that there was a relative lack of enemy variation (I feel like I can remember maybe 15 or so different enemies, which seems quite low), but again, this isn't that big of a deal.
In terms of improvement, despite enjoying the art style, there were many, many times where the background and foreground blended together. It led to some frustrations in terms of exploration/the exploration wasn't the most smooth in this respect. For example, sometimes I'd jump thinking I'd land on a ledge, only to find out that what I thought was a ledge was actually part of the background and then I'd fall down a cliff or something. Also, while I don't think this is meant to be a furry game (?), it's close to walking that line and that's just not my thing. Lastly, I didn't like the teleportation system. You can only teleport from a save point if you have a teleportation stone, or when you leave an area. However, you can only teleport to the exit/entrance of another area. So woe be unto you if you think, "Hey, I'll come back here to clean this out later/when I have more abilities" and it's in the middle of a big area.
The game took me about 12 hours to complete one run with ~95% completion. I took another ~2.5 hours to do some achievement clean-up. I'm leaving two achievements locked (completing the game on a harder difficulty and completing the arenas with max stars. The former would require a complete replay of the game; the latter would likely require ~1-2 hours to do and I just don't really enjoy arenas unless they're in a little-known game called Hollow Knight).
My guess is when this came out, it was incredible. I think I've been spoiled by some games in this genre (like those mentioned in this review), so while it's better than average, it didn't blow my socks off. That said, it's a solid choice for fans of metroidvanias.